Churches Without Web Sites

We have a site through a free service. We bought the domain name and have it forwarded to the site.

We are in a small town but still have many who find out about us on the web. I think every church should want to have a site, and with as many free or lo cost services available, there's no reason not to.

 

When we were looking for a church, I was disappointed when I couldn't find anything out about them on the web. Of course some don't have much outside either - like service times!

 

We had one but due to finacial issues we had to drop it. $27.50 a month could be better used somewhere else. We do have a facebook page though.

 

Agreed.

it's better to stay simple and updated rather than fancy but out-of-date.


Our website is invaluable to us. On a slow month, there's 1000 unique computers hitting us up. Sure, some of those are regulars, staff, or people who've done our website as their home page.

But tons of folks make their first inquiry about our church via web.

 

For a simple church web site, there's no reason to pay more than 5-6 dollars a month for a web hosting plan.

 

Our church has a website and we use GoDaddy at a cost of $6.99 a month.

 

Hey, you can get basic info out, as well as get out late-breaking urgent stuff (weather news, etc.)

Maybe not as many bells and whistles, but I'm sure it does the job.

For us, we just do our best to make sure our web address is well-known and well-published in our area. Definitely worth it.

Our second-most important feature for us: We do most of our event sign-ups on line. Definitely a plus for us.

 

I've recently taken to advising those who are new to the website thing about using Facebook. Like rbell pointed out, the church website administrator can put up church news (such as event cancellations, prayer requests, etc.) that "friended" church members can get immediately. And with Facebook applications on iPhones and Android phones, church members can be notified of on-goings at any time.

With Facebook still being a free service, this is possibly the best option for churches on a tight budget.


As for GoDaddy -- it might be the cheapest domain service, but their pornographic advertisements, and the number of pornographic websites that also utilize them...well, I pay a little bit more, but I go through a domain name service that guarantees no pornographic sites through its service.

 

I have not seen any pornographic advertisments for GoDaddy. Our Church has been using GoDaddy for years now.

As a matter of fact, GoDaddy's rules state that there is to be no pornographic material on pages set up on GoDaddy accounts. Notice:

I suspect the rumor that a number of pornographic websites use GoDaddy is fabricated. If you know of such sites, I suggest you call them and report said sites.

 

You can find Christian web hosting companies in the range of 5-7 dollars a month.

I am sure that Godaddy's opinion on what is pornographic is different that what is really pornographic. Their ads are notoriously vulgur. In fact, there was a big news cycle around their raunchy ads for the superbowl a few years ago.

 

Perhaps my definition of pornographic is a bit more strict. As has been noted by someone else, their commercials are built around sex.

If you do a search for GoDaddy and pornography, you'll find websites where users admit using GoDaddy for pornographic website domains (just be very careful about which ones you click on); and you can see the GoDaddy ads for yourself on YouTube.

The fact of the matter is, GoDaddy is actually part of several different companies, including Wild West Domains, and manages so many domains they can't actively monitor each and every one; and their primary concern is mass mailing (spam), not actually what each web site puts up as content.

 

I've seen some churches use Wordpress too with a static home page. Updates can be subscribed to via RSS.